Showing Up On The Day Of Judgment

By: Yochanan Gordon

“Like a shepherd who directs his sheep beneath his staff, so too You cause to pass, count, and enumerate every living soul…”

We show up in shul on the Day of Judgment flanked by those standing around us and with the Machzor in front of us.

Collectively, every shul has a rav whose job it is to guide his congregants spiritually through the heavy days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and a chazzan or ba’al tefillah who serves as the mouthpiece of the people he represents.

The presence of fellow petitioners, the rav, the chazzan, and all of the prayer guides we have accumulated over the years provides us with a certain sense of reassurance. We feel as if we have counsel accompanying us through the judgment of the High Holidays.

However, from the imagery in the aforementioned liturgical excerpt, it seems that each sheep, if only for a solitary moment, passes before the King alone.

There is a famous parable about a time when the lion, the king of the jungle, became angry at the other animals and threatened them all if he could not be appeased before a specified time. Fear struck the hearts of all the animals except for the clever fox, who was confident that he possessed the wherewithal to appease the lion.

“I have three thousand parables with which to appease the king,” the fox announced.

The animals collectively breathed a sigh of relief.

The appointed day arrived and the animals embarked on their journey to the lion’s lair. Shortly after setting out, the fox announced that he had forgotten one thousand of the parables. The horse assured the other animals that two thousand of the fox’s parables were more than enough to get the job done.

A while later, the fox began looking a little overwhelmed when he announced that he had forgotten another thousand parables. Still, he assured everyone that the remaining thousand would certainly be enough to appease the lion.

They finally arrived at the lion’s lair, and the fox buried his head in dread and shame as he informed the animals that, unfortunately, he had forgotten all three thousand parables.

The animals were beside themselves, hurling all sorts of threats at the poor fox. But at that point it had become clear that they would have to fend for themselves in front of the lion.

So much of our High Holiday experience is dependent upon the rav’s speech, the chazzan’s performance, and the ability of the ba’al tokea to sound the shofar with ease and effortlessness. The problem is that sometimes all of these layers of the experience can conceal us from the fact that eventually we have to show up in court, introduce ourselves by name, and state our own case.

There is a well-known story about the ba’al tokea of the Baal Shem Tov, who had spent months before Rosh Hashanah preparing all of the Kabbalistic intentions associated with blowing the shofar. He prepared a paper with the kavanos written out in a clear and readable format and slipped it into his Machzor for the moment when he would be standing at the bimah ready to sound the shofar.

The big moment arrived, and the poor ba’al tokea discovered that the paper which he could have sworn he had slipped into the right place was no longer there.

After all those months of preparation, all he could do was blow the shofar simply, with a contrite heart made even more broken by the absence of the intentions he had worked so hard to prepare.

Feeling terribly self-conscious about what had happened, he approached his Rebbe afterward. But the Baal Shem Tov congratulated him on the raw and genuine shofar blowing, explaining that had he used all of the intentions he had prepared, it would not have accomplished remotely the same thing.

Much of our experience is very similar to that of the jungle animals and the Baal Shem Tov’s ba’al tokea.

We buy the latest seforim. We search for the perfect Machzor that will put us in the right frame of mind. We listen to speeches and explanations and look for something that will tell us how to access the awesomeness of the day.

But there can be one thing missing from the entire experience: You.

I remember when I first became serious about my Rosh Hashanah davening and procured one of the prevalent davening guides, which literally instructed its reader what to think about with nearly every line of Shemoneh Esrei.

For a while I found it very helpful. But at some point, it occurred to me that it was almost like delivering a prepared bar mitzvah pshetel in front of G-d that I hadn’t even written.

I also remember the day when I decided to let go of that sefer and allow my own imagination to soar.

At first, it was somewhat precarious. I had become accustomed to being told what I was supposed to be thinking at every point in the davening. Without that, I wasn’t entirely sure where my mind was supposed to go.

But ultimately it became liberating, genuine, raw, and honest.

There were words that suddenly meant something to me because of what I happened to be going through that particular year. There were places where my mind wandered to my children, my family, my shortcomings, my hopes, the things I wanted to change, and the things I desperately wanted to hold onto.

It may not have been what the guide instructed me to think about at that particular moment, but at least it was me thinking it.

None of this is to minimize the importance of a rav, a chazzan, a ba’al tokea, a Machzor, or the many seforim that help us understand and appreciate the davening. We need all of them. We need people who know more than we do to teach us how to approach these days.

But ultimately, they can only bring us to the door.

The fox can bring the animals to the lion’s lair, but eventually each animal has to speak for itself.

The ba’al tokea can spend months preparing his kavanos, but when the paper disappears, there is still a Jew standing there with a shofar in his hands.

And we can arrive in shul with the perfect Machzor and all of the right commentaries, but at some point during those long hours of Rosh Hashanah there has to be a moment when it is just us standing before Hashem.

Perhaps that is what we mean when we say: Ke-vakarat ro’eh edro, ma’avir tzano tachat shivto.

The sheep are part of a flock. They travel together and are guided together. But when they pass beneath the shepherd’s staff, they pass one at a time.

There is something frightening about that, but there is also something deeply honest about it.

Because for all the people surrounding us on Rosh Hashanah, and for all the help we have in figuring out what to say and what to think, ultimately Hashem isn’t asking to meet the person described in the commentary.

He is asking to meet us.

Maybe that is why all the preparation in the world can only take us so far.

At some point, our name is called.

And we simply have to show up. 

Yochanan Gordon can be reached at [email protected]. Read more of Yochanan’s articles at 5TJT.com.